Nebula Awards Showcase 2003 Read online

  •

  The ghost is bigger again. He’s prickly all over. He bristles with hair. The hair is reddish brown and sharp-looking. Louise doesn’t think it would be a good idea to touch the ghost now. All night he moves back and forth in front of her bed, sliding on his belly like a snake. His fingers dig into the floorboards and he pushes himself forward with his toes. His mouth stays open as if he’s eating air.

  Louise goes to the kitchen. She opens a can of beans, a can of pears, hearts of palm. She puts the different things on a plate and places the plate in front of the ghost. He moves around it. Maybe he’s like Anna—picky. Louise doesn’t know what he wants. Louise refuses to sleep in the living room again. It’s her bedroom after all. She lies awake and listens to the ghost press himself against her clean floor, moving backwards and forwards before the foot of the bed all night long.

  In the morning the ghost is in the closet, upside down against the wall. Enough, she thinks, and she goes to the mall and buys a stack of CDs. Patsy Cline, Emmylou Harris, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Lyle Lovett. She asks the clerk if he can recommend anything with yodeling on it, but he’s young and not very helpful.

  “Never mind,” she says. “I’ll just take these.”

  While he’s running her credit card, she says, “Wait. Have you ever seen a ghost?”

  “None of your business, lady,” he says. “But if I had, I’d make it show me where it buried its treasure. And then I’d dig up the treasure and I’d be rich and then I wouldn’t be selling you this stupid country shit. Unless the treasure had a curse on it.”

  “What if there wasn’t any treasure?” Louise says.

  “Then I’d stick the ghost in a bottle and sell it to a museum,” the kid says. “A real live ghost. That’s got to be worth something. I’d buy a hog and ride it to California. I’d go make my own music, and there wouldn’t be any fucking yodeling.”

  •

  The ghost seems to like Patsy Cline. It isn’t that he says anything. But he doesn’t disappear. He comes out of the closet. He lies on the floor so that Louise has to walk around him. He’s thicker now, more solid. Maybe he was a Patsy Cline fan when he was alive. The hair stands up all over his body, and it moves gently, as if a breeze is blowing through it.

  They both like Johnny Cash. Louise is pleased—they have something in common now.

  “I’m on to Jackson,” Louise sings. “You big-talkin’ man.”

  •

  The phone rings in the middle of the night. Louise sits straight up in bed. “What?” she says. “Did you say something?” Is she in a hotel room? She orients herself quickly. The ghost is under the bed again, one hand sticking out as if flagging down a bedroom taxi. Louise picks up the phone.

  “Number eight just told me the strangest thing,” Louise says. “Did you try the country music?”

  “Yes,” Louise says. “But it didn’t work. I think he liked it.”

  “That’s a relief,” Louise says. “What are you doing on Friday?”

  “Working,” Louise says. “And then I don’t know. I was going to rent a video or something. Want to come over and see the ghost?”

  “I’d like to bring over a few people,” Louise says. “After rehearsal. The cellists want to see the ghost, too. They want to play for it, actually. It’s kind of complicated. Maybe you could fix dinner. Spaghetti’s fine. Maybe some salad, some garlic bread. I’ll bring wine.”

  “How many cellists?” Louise says.

  “Eight,” Louise says. “And Patrick’s busy. I might have to bring Anna. It could be educational. Is the ghost still naked?”

  “Yes,” Louise says. “But it’s okay. He got furry. You can tell her he’s a dog. So what’s going to happen?”

  “That depends on the ghost,” Louise says. “If he likes the cellists, he might leave with one of them. You know, go into one of the cellos. Apparently it’s very good for the music. And it’s good for the ghost, too. Sort of like those little fish that live on the big fishes. Remoras. Number eight is explaining it to me. He said that haunted instruments aren’t just instruments. It’s like they have a soul. The musician doesn’t play the instrument anymore. He or she plays the ghost.”

  “I don’t know if he’d fit,” Louise says. “He’s largish. At least part of the time.”

  Louise says, “Apparently cellos are a lot bigger on the inside than they look on the outside. Besides, it’s not like you’re using him for anything.”

  “I guess not,” Louise says.

  “If word gets out, you’ll have musicians knocking on your door day and night, night and day,” Louise says. “Trying to steal him. Don’t tell anyone.”

  •

  Gloria and Mary come to see Louise at work. They leave with a group in a week for Greece. They’re going to all the islands. They’ve been working with Louise to organize the hotels, the tours, the passports, and the buses. They’re fond of Louise. They tell her about their sons, show her pictures. They think she should get married and have a baby.

  Louise says, “Have either of you ever seen a ghost?”

  Gloria shakes her head. Mary says, “Oh, honey, all the time when I was growing up. It runs in families sometimes, ghosts and stuff like that. Not as much now, of course. My eyesight isn’t so good now.”

  “What do you do with them?” Louise says.

  “Not much,” Mary says. “You can’t eat them and you can’t talk to most of them and they aren’t worth much.”

  “I played with a Ouija board once,” Gloria says. “With some other girls. We asked it who we would marry, and it told us some names. I forget. I don’t recall that it was accurate. Then we got scared. We asked it who we were talking to, and it spelled out Z-E-U-S. Then it was just a bunch of letters. Gibberish.”

  “What about music?” Louise says.

  “I like music,” Gloria says. “It makes me cry sometimes when I hear a pretty song. I saw Frank Sinatra sing once. He wasn’t so special.”

  “It will bother a ghost,” Mary says. “Some kinds of music will stir it up. Some kinds of music will lay a ghost. We used to catch ghosts in my brother’s fiddle. Like fishing, or catching fireflies in a jar. But my mother always said to leave them be.”

  “I have a ghost,” Louise confesses.

  “Would you ask it something?” Gloria says. “Ask it what it’s like being dead. I like to know about a place before I get there. I don’t mind going someplace new, but I like to know what it’s going to be like. I like to have some idea.”

  •

  Louise asks the ghost but he doesn’t say anything. Maybe he can’t remember what it was like to be alive. Maybe he’s forgotten the language. He just lies on the bedroom floor, flat on his back, legs open, looking up at her like she’s something special. Or maybe he’s thinking of England.

  •

  Louise makes spaghetti. Louise is on the phone talking to caterers. “So you don’t think we have enough champagne,” she says. “I know it’s a gala, but I don’t want them falling over. Just happy. Happy signs checks. Falling over doesn’t do me any good. How much more do you think we need?”

  Anna sits on the kitchen floor and watches Louise cutting up tomatoes. “You’ll have to make me something green,” she says.

  “Why don’t you just eat your crayon?” Louise says. “Your mother isn’t going to have time to make you green food when she has another baby. You’ll have to eat plain food like everybody else, or else eat grass like cows do.”

  “I’ll make my own green food,” Anna says.

  “You’re going to have a little brother or a little sister,” Louise says. “You’ll have to behave. You’ll have to be responsible. You’ll have to share your room and your toys—not just the regular ones, the green ones, too.”

  “I’m not going to have a sister,” Anna says. “I’m going to have a dog.”

  “You know how it works, right?” Louise says, pushing the drippy tomatoes into the saucepan. “A man and a woman fall in love and they kiss and t
hen the woman has a baby. First she gets fat and then she goes to the hospital. She comes home with a baby.”

  “You’re lying,” Anna says. “The man and the woman go to the pound. They pick out a dog. They bring the dog home and they feed it baby food. And then one day all the dog’s hair falls out and it’s pink. And it learns how to talk, and it has to wear clothes. And they give it a new name, not a dog name. They give it a baby name and it has to give the dog name back.”

  “Whatever,” Louise says. “I’m going to have a baby, too. And it will have the same name as your mother and the same name as me. Louise. Louise will be the name of your mother’s baby, too. The only person named Anna will be you.”

  “My dog name was Louise,” Anna says. “But you’re not allowed to call me that.”

  Louise comes in the kitchen. “So much for the caterers,” she says. “So where is it?”

  “Where’s what?” Louise says.

  “The you-know-what,” Louise says, “you know.”

  “I haven’t seen it today,” Louise says. “Maybe this won’t work. Maybe it would rather live here.” All day long she’s had the radio turned on, tuned to the country station. Maybe the ghost will take the hint and hide out somewhere until everyone leaves.

  The cellists arrive. Seven men and a woman. Louise doesn’t bother to remember their names. The woman is tall and thin. She has long arms and a long nose. She eats three plates of spaghetti. The cellists talk to each other. They don’t talk about the ghost. They talk about music. They complain about acoustics. They tell Louise that her spaghetti is delicious. Louise just smiles. She stares at the woman cellist, sees Louise watching her. Louise shrugs, nods. She holds up five fingers.

  Louise and the cellists seem comfortable. They tease each other. They tell stories. Do they know? Do they talk about Louise? Do they brag? Compare notes? How could they know Louise better than Louise knows her? Suddenly Louise feels as if this isn’t her house after all. It belongs to Louise and the cellists. It’s their ghost, not hers. They live here. After dinner they’ll stay and she’ll leave.

  Number five is the one who likes foreign films, Louise remembers. The one with the goldfish. Louise said number five had a great sense of humor.

  Louise gets up and goes to the kitchen to get more wine, leaving Louise alone with the cellists. The one sitting next to Louise says, “You have the prettiest eyes. Have I seen you in the audience sometimes?”

  “It’s possible,” Louise says.

  “Louise talks about you all the time,” the cellist says. He’s young, maybe twenty-four or twenty-five. Louise wonders if he’s the one with the big hands. He has pretty eyes, too. She tells him that.

  “Louise doesn’t know everything about me,” she says, flirting.

  Anna is hiding under the table. She growls and pretends to bite the cellists. The cellists know Anna. They’re used to her. They probably think she’s cute. They pass her bits of broccoli, lettuce.

  The living room is full of cellos in black cases the cellists brought in, like sarcophaguses on little wheels. Sarcophabuses. Dead baby carriages. After dinner the cellists take their chairs into the living room. They take out their cellos and tune them. Anna insinuates herself between cellos, hanging on the backs of chairs. The house is full of sound.

  Louise and Louise sit on chairs in the hall and look in. They can’t talk. It’s too loud. Louise reaches into her purse, pulls out a packet of earplugs. She gives two to Anna, two to Louise, keeps two for herself. Louise puts her earplugs in. Now the cellists sound as if they are underground, down in some underground lake, or in a cave. Louise fidgets.

  The cellists play for almost an hour. When they take a break Louise feels tender, as if the cellists have been throwing things at her. Tiny lumps of sound. She almost expects to see bruises on her arms.

  The cellists go outside to smoke cigarettes. Louise takes Louise aside. “You should tell me now if there isn’t a ghost,” she says. “I’ll tell them to go home. I promise I won’t be angry.”

  “There is a ghost,” Louise says. “Really.” But she doesn’t try to sound too convincing. What she doesn’t tell Louise is that she’s stuck a Walkman in her closet. She’s got the Patsy Cline CD on repeat with the volume turned way down.

  Louise says, “So he was talking to you during dinner. What do you think?”

  “Who?” Louise says. “Him? He was pretty nice.”

  Louise sighs. “Yeah. I think he’s pretty nice, too.”

  The cellists come back inside. The young cellist with the glasses and the big hands looks over at both of them and smiles a big blissed smile. Maybe it wasn’t cigarettes that they were smoking.

  Anna has fallen asleep inside a cello case, like a fat green pea in a coffin.

  Louise tries to imagine the cellists without their clothes. She tries to picture them naked and fucking Louise. No, fucking Louise, fucking her instead. Which one is number four? The one with the beard? Number four, she remembers, likes Louise to sit on top and bounce up and down. She does all the work while he waves his hand. He conducts her. Louise thinks it’s funny.

  Louise pictures all of the cellists, naked and in the same bed. She’s in the bed. The one with the beard first. Lie on your back, she tells him. Close your eyes. Don’t move. I’m in charge. I’m conducting this affair. The one with the skinny legs and the poochy stomach. The young one with curly black hair, bent over his cello as if he might fall in. Who was flirting with her. Do this, she tells a cellist. Do this, she tells another one. She can’t figure out what to do with the woman. Number five. She can’t even figure out how to take off number five’s clothes. Number five sits on the edge of the bed, hands tucked under her buttocks. She’s still in her bra and underwear.

  Louise thinks about the underwear for a minute. It has little flowers on it. Periwinkles. Number five waits for Louise to tell her what to do. But Louise is having a hard enough time figuring out where everyone else goes. A mouth has fastened itself on her breast. Someone is tugging at her hair. She is holding on to someone’s penis with both hands, someone else’s penis is rubbing against her cunt. There are penises everywhere. Wait your turn, Louise thinks. Be patient.

  Number five has pulled a cello out of her underwear. She’s playing a sad little tune on it. It’s distracting. It’s not sexy at all. Another cellist stands up on the bed, jumps up and down. Soon they’re all doing it. The bed creaks and groans, and the woman plays faster and faster on her fiddle. Stop it, Louise thinks, you’ll wake the ghost.

  “Shit!” Louise says—she’s yanked Louise’s earplug out, drops it in Louise’s lap. “There he is under your chair. Look. Louise, you really do have a ghost.”

  The cellists don’t look. Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. They are fucking their cellos with their fingers, stroking music out, promising the ghost yodels and Patsy Cline and funeral marches and whole cities of music and music to eat and music to drink and music to put on and wear like clothes. It isn’t music Louise has ever heard before. It sounds like a lullaby, and then it sounds like a pack of wolves, and then it sounds like a slaughterhouse, and then it sounds like a motel room and a married man saying I love you and the shower is running at the same time. It makes her teeth ache and her heart rattle.

  It sounds like the color green. Anna wakes up. She’s sitting in the cello case, hands over her ears.

  This is too loud, Louise thinks. The neighbors will complain. She bends over and sees the ghost, small and unobjectionable as a lapdog, lying under her chair. Oh, my poor baby, she thinks. Don’t be fooled. Don’t fall for the song. They don’t mean it.

  But something is happening to the ghost. He shivers and twists and gapes. He comes out from under the chair. He leaves all his fur behind, under the chair in a neat little pile. He drags himself along the floor with his strong beautiful hands, scissoring with his legs along the floor like a swimmer. He’s planning to change, to leave her and go away. Louise pulls out her other earplug. She’s going to give them to the ghost.
“Stay here,” she says out loud, “stay here with me and the real Patsy Cline. Don’t go.” She can’t hear herself speak. The cellos roar like lions in cages and licks of fire. Louise opens her mouth to say it louder, but the ghost is going. Fine, okay, go comb your hair. See if I care.

  Louise and Louise and Anna watch as the ghost climbs into a cello. He pulls himself up, shakes the air off like drops of water. He gets smaller. He gets fainter. He melts into the cello like spilled milk. All the other cellists pause. The cellist who has caught Louise’s ghost plays a scale. “Well,” he says. It doesn’t sound any different to Louise but all the other cellists sigh.

  It’s the bearded cellist who’s caught the ghost. He holds on to his cello as if it might grow legs and run away if he let go. He looks like he’s discovered America. He plays something else. Something old-fashioned, Louise thinks, a pretty old-fashioned tune, and she wants to cry. She puts her earplugs back in again. The cellist looks up at Louise as he plays and he smiles. You owe me, she thinks.

  But it’s the youngest cellist, the one who thinks Louise has pretty eyes, who stays. Louise isn’t sure how this happens. She isn’t sure that she has the right cellist. She isn’t sure that the ghost went into the right cello. But the cellists pack up their cellos and they thank her and they drive away, leaving the dishes piled in the sink for Louise to wash.

  The youngest cellist is still sitting in her living room. “I thought I had it,” he says. “I thought for sure I could play that ghost.”

  “I’m leaving,” Louise says. But she doesn’t leave.

  “Good night,” Louise says.

  “Do you want a ride?” Louise says to the cellist.

  He says, “I thought I might hang around. See if there’s another ghost in here. If that’s okay with Louise.”

  Louise shrugs. “Good night,” she says to Louise.

  “Well,” Louise says, “good night.” She picks up Anna, who has fallen asleep on the couch. Anna was not impressed with the ghost. He wasn’t a dog and he wasn’t green.